For instance, e-commerce companies say that during the big discount sales, fashion, as a category, provides the highest volumes but in terms of value mobile phones reign supreme.

Arvind Singhal, chairman of Technopak, a consultancy firm in the retail space, said, "This is going to be a growing trend and we see that categories like consumer electronics and durables followed by furniture are big-ticket items, which will be financed through these no-cost EMI schemes."

Singhal said manufacturers and sellers who are online are moving away to some extent from heavy discounts by offering consumers EMIs at no cost for high value items.

E-commerce players, however, said most sellers and manufacturers are cutting down on their promotion and marketing budgets (like advertisements) and are preferring to pass that on to consumers through no-cost finance.

They are not trimming their discounts as they want the market to grow.

They point out that the no-cost EMI essentially means that many customers who were postponing their buying have now come into the market because of a financing option.